Ultimately, Nutting opted to maintain the status quo. Other than hiring former major leaguer Jay Bell as the team’s hitting coach and reassigning first base coach Luis Silverio to senior Latin adviser for minor league operations, he settled on keeping management intact, manager Clint Hurdle and General Manager Neal Huntington included.

Nutting pointed to the arc over the last few years – and not the swoon that sent the Pirates to a 20th straight losing season – as the reason to stay the course. The Pirates were 16 games over .500 in August but faded over the final six weeks to finish 79-83. The end hurt, but Nutting believes the long view shows just how far the franchise has come.

“We considered all kinds of alternatives,” Nutting said. “At the end of the day, the progress that the organization has made – when you look at the seven-game improvement last year, more than

20-game improvement over two years, the rankings of the development system – we do have a much stronger organization than we did.”

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"And if you're me, you count all your free money, give yourself a nice bonus, and laugh at the poor saps who have to win ballgames to make a profit!"

Of course, the Pirates won more games last year than in any season since 1997, and the leaked financial books show that the Pirates aren't even disbursing enough money to ownership to cover income taxes, but why let the facts get in the way of tired poor-little-me bleating from the richest kids on the block?

At the start of the season, I pooh-poohed the idea of the big Burnett pitcher signing. I said that the Pirates were two years away from contention, and since they weren't going to get anything out of the guy that far into the contract, because the contract would be over, they should have just kept the money until they figured out where they needed it. The reasons I gave were that the Pirate offense pretty much amounted to Andrew McCutcheon, and they had too many kid pitchers for all of them to come through at once.

I would like to apologize to all Pirates fans. Your offense did, indeed, largely consist of Andrew. But the kid pitchers were older than I had remembered them to be, and did come through, your Big Pitcher was great, and you were in serious contention until what looks like a simple lack of depth wore you down.

You've got a couple of position spots to fill, but you have a choice of which ones, because your only untouchable is Andrew. You could easily contend next year, if the ownership puts a bit more money into upgrading the bats. I made a bad prediction. I haven't had to say that about the Pirates in quite some time. Good Luck next year!